


Spindrift

by commoncomitatus



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-08-01
Packaged: 2018-02-11 05:13:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2054973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on "Rejoined". Torias isn't usually a man of his word, but he'll make an exception for a pretty girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Torias Dax loved being a pilot.

It didn’t hurt that he was a damn good one, of course, but that was just a small part of it. He was young and strong and often excelled without the least bit of effort, and though that was admittedly pretty helpful when it came to carving out a name for himself, it wasn’t why it sang in his blood. Being good was okay, but it wasn’t enough.

It was the energy that sang to him, the adrenaline that flooded his veins, the pure pulse of power that rang like romance in his heart. Talent didn’t mean a damn thing without passion, and it was the passion that Torias loved so much. It was the thrill of it all. The sweet vibration of a well-calibrated engine under his seat, the hum of electricity at his fingertips, the not-quite fear of knowing that every moment, every breath, every thought could be his last. It was the turbulence, the smooth sailing, the _‘hold on tight’_ exhilaration. It was rising up and going down, cruising straight and heart-in-mouth zigzags. It was the void of space and the blue of a planet’s sky, and on a good day it was both of those things in the same moment.

Old engines, new engines, prototype engines. Any engine was a good engine, so far as he was concerned, and he loved them all. He didn’t know the ins and outs of how the damn things worked, and he didn’t particularly care either. That bumbling nerd Tobin had a thing or two to say about it, of course, but Torias didn’t have the patience to listen to him. In the cockpit, he had wings; that was all he needed to know.

It was hard to block out the knowledge, though. That was one of the big differences of being joined. Back then, ignorance came easy. Before the Dax symbiont, before the joining, before everything changed. Back when he was just plain Torias. Ignorance was bliss, and he was the most blissful of all. Flyboy, loud-mouth, occasional jackass. Just plain Torias, king of the skies and prince of the spaceways. What good was all that nerdy knowledge when he’d left the ground a thousand miles below? But now he had Tobin in his head, Tobin and the others, and it was harder to be ignorant when they kept reminding him that he wasn’t.

He was still himself, of course, but it was different now. He was still cocksure, still arrogant and self-satisfied, still just as quick as he’d ever been to take risks and just as slow to to assess them, but there was a sobriety that reared up in him sometimes now, a taming of this youthful impulses that felt very different from the man he used to be. Before, he had nobody but himself to worry about, no life but his own to forfeit and throw away. He had been reckless, often bordering on stupid, and it was only with hindsight and a couple of hundred years of sudden experience that he realised now what a fool he was.

Of course, he had no intention of standing by and watching those stuffy old hosts ruin his fun (he was still Torias, after all, and he always would be), but he knew his responsibilities well enough and he had no intention of shying away from them. His wasn’t the only life in his hands now; the symbiont inside of him was his to protect and nurture, and however far he strayed from the safe path of tradition he was still a Trill, and he knew what it meant to be a host. He may not have matched the Commission’s perfect profile exactly, but he’d done well enough to get chosen in spite of their sneering and head-shaking, and he’d be damned if he’d give them any reason to roll their eyes now and tell him how right they were to doubt him.

It was a matter of duty, yes, but a matter of pride as well. He’d struggled as an initiate, not least of all because he’d often felt like the only one on Trill who believed he had a shot. It was difficult to be committed to something when you didn’t truly believe in it, and if he were completely honest (which he made it a habit never to be), he hadn’t really been sold on the idea. His instructors and his peers were less subtle; they made no secret of their assumptions that he’d be washed out in the first week, and it was only by sheer spite against the way they looked down on him that he didn’t quit.

That was why he’d been so surprised, so overwhelmed when he made it through. They were so against him from Day One, so opposed to everything he stood for, and yet somehow he was the one they picked in the end. It hadn’t exactly left him humbled — there were very few things that could do that, and a bunch of smartasses deeming him ‘worthy’ definitely wasn’t on the list — but it had definitely instilled a sense of duty in him, an awareness of how it felt to have another life depending on him. It changed him, if only a little, and though it would take a whole lot more than that to tame him entirely, he couldn’t deny that he’d become at least a fraction more restrained since Dax made him its new home.

Of course, all the strength of character in the world couldn’t prepare him for the experience of actually being joined, and for the first couple of weeks Torias was a confused, dizzy mess. Oh, he was a hot mess, there was no mistake about that, but he was a mess just the same, and it was far longer than he expected before he could look into a mirror and recognise the face looking back. He was disoriented, confused, a little lost, and far more feminine than he’d ever admit to his fellow flyboys. In short, he was a shadow of his former self, and it was not much consolation at all that the confusion was temporary and — according to the Commission big-shots — ‘perfectly natural’.

It was Emony who spoke the loudest. Emony, the self-satisfied little upstart, the so-called ‘athlete’ who thought she was better than everyone else just because she’d won a few medals in some archaic competition. Emony, who told him, loudly and repeatedly and in no uncertain terms, that he needed to be more focused if he really wanted to make something of himself, that he had to work hard if he wanted to succeed, that the big wide galaxy wouldn’t just lie on its back waiting for him to grow up and take things seriously. Emony, who was nothing short of horrified that someone who’d ignored so much of his training had been chosen as the newest host for her precious Dax.

Torias didn’t like Emony, and he’d made it a personal mission to ignore her at every available opportunity.

She wasn’t the only one, either. Truth be told, so far as he was concerned, they were all a bunch of windbags who were better off letting someone young and hip take over, and quite frankly he didn’t think much of any of them. Lela had a stick lodged so far up her ass it was a miracle they’d found room enough inside her for the symbiont; whenever she chose to step up and offer a pearl or two of her would-be wisdom, he knew that he was in for yet another lecture about how young men wouldn’t have gotten away with his kind of behaviour in her day. Tobin was a whimpering coward who didn’t have any idea how to cut loose and enjoy himself, and though he was easily as smart as any science nerd Torias had ever met, he didn’t know a damn thing about the stuff that really mattered. Emony, of course, thought she was better than everyone else just because she was an athlete. As for the symbiont’s most recent host, Audrid… well, the woman was a mother and a nurturer, and she damn near suffocated him with the way she insisted on crap like ‘common sense’ and ‘moderation’; needless to say, Torias blamed her for all of the questionable and unnatural urges that had plagued him since the joining.

It was Audrid’s fault that he cut himself off after three drinks instead of five, and it was her fault when he decided to turn in early the night before a big flight instead of staying out late and flirting with pretty girls. It was Audrid’s fault that, on the rare occasions she did allow him those flirty indulgences, he simply nodded and smiled at the young ladies who frequented his favourite establishments, that he bought them drinks and played the perfect young gentlemen instead of whistling like he used to and asking them if they wanted to see his cockpit. It was Audrid’s fault that he caught himself before losing his temper, that he counted to ten instead of pounding on the nearest solid surface. Audrid took all of his best traits and diluted them; she tainted his charm with compassion and poisoned his attitude with sentimentality. She had made him soft, made him weak, and that was just not cool.

It did, however, make him a better pilot. Not that he’d ever admit it in any place where those little voices of Daxes past could hear him, of course, but nonetheless he couldn’t deny it. He was more focused now, more determined and more serious, and because of that he was stronger. He was still as arrogant and cocksure as he’d ever been, or so he told himself; he just had the restraint to be less so when rubbing shoulders with important people. More than that, though, although he’d barely been joined a month, he could feel Dax’s influence on him already. Tobin’s genius, annoying as it was, gave him an edge over the other airhead flyboys, Emony’s judgement had given a massive boost to his pinpoint reflexes, and Lela’s drive had done wonders for his focus. Between them, they taught him a lot, about his shuttles and the people who worked with them, and with that newfound understanding came better control and concentration.

As for Audrid and her damned compassion… well, he couldn’t deny that she made it a whole lot easier to suck up to the guys on top. Her empathy bled through in even his most manufactured lines, reshaping his smart mouth into something that sounded almost sincere, and though her influence certainly hadn’t helped his chances with the ladies, her particular brand of sweet talk had scored him a few choice missions from the eggheads in control that he knew he would never have earned on his own. As frustrating as she was when evening fell, even Torias couldn’t deny that the old bird had her uses when he was on the clock.

In spite of himself, he was grateful. Sure, he gave the old guys and gals a hard time, but he knew the good they were doing for him, and yeah, he appreciated it. Every day he found himself wondering what he’d done to wow the bigwigs at the Symbiosis Commission, what they could possibly have seen in his performance to give him a shot at the symbiont even as they rolled their eyes to his face. He wasn’t the hardest worker, wasn’t the most diligent student, and he sure as hell didn’t have anything new to offer. He was a first-class wash-out, and everyone knew it, and yet he was the one who’d stood up there and accepted the responsibility while the hardworking suckers who’d shrugged him off got sent home with a smile and a _“thanks for trying”_.

In truth, there was a little part of him that couldn’t help feeling a little guilty about that. He’d seen good friends washed out of the initiate program for minor indiscretions, watched top-grade students thrown aside without a moment’s hesitation for some pointless little thing or another, and all the while Torias had sailed through without even trying, ducking and weaving under the radar like a stealth shuttle. It wasn’t enough to make him think twice about accepting the symbiont when it was offered, of course, but it definitely made him appreciate it a little more.

It didn’t help either that he felt like a completely different person; there was no getting away from that even if he wanted to. Some mornings, he’d wake up and stutter ten times before he even replicated breakfast, as shy and self-conscious as Tobin even when there was nobody else there to see it. Other times there was so much of Audrid or Lela in him that he almost found himself blushing with shame for the youthful indiscretions of the previous night. Most of the time, he could barely even remember the wild and reckless young man he’d been before, and there was just enough of the judgemental Emony always at the forefront that he couldn’t even bring himself to feel bitter about it.

Every day he became something different. He’d wake up feeling female, feeling shorter or older or left-handed or long-haired, like a legislator or a mother or a scientist, like any one of a thousand things that were not him. And yet, every now and then, just when he was about to give up on remembering young Torias at all, he was right there, himself, like he’d never changed at all. The others were silent then, stepping back and allowing the bright and brash young troublemaker to step up to the front, to re-stake his claim on the psyche they all shared, and if only for a moment in a day filled with chaos and contradiction, he would know beyond all doubt who and what he was. It was confusing, disorienting, but it was exhilarating as well, and it wasn’t long at all before he found that his lust for life — the thrill of simply existing — had redoubled, igniting a fire within him that was as young and new as it was old and wise.

He’d thought they taught him everything in the initiate program. Wasn’t that what they were there for? To prepare the unsuspecting young initiates for the harsh reality of being joined? He’d naturally just assumed that they knew what they were talking about, that they knew what they were doing, that they were helping _him_ to know what _he_ was doing. He’d taken in all of their warnings, all of their words, and he’d thought he knew it all. He’d thought he was ready, but he wasn’t even close.

Torias had always been what they called a ‘strong personality’. Even in the early days of the programme, back when nobody thought he’d last more than a week, that side of him had always stood out among his peers. The big boys at the Symbiosis Commission said that about him all the time, and they’d made it pretty damn clear that it was one of the main reasons he’d been chosen for joining in the end despite his shortcomings in almost every other category. It sure as hell wasn’t because he’d worked hard, and he hadn’t been so self-deluded as to pretend that it was. That ‘strong personality’ of his was probably the only thing that got him through the programme at all, and so it had been second nature in him to just assume that it was all he needed to deal with the four new occupants in his head. It would be a piece of cake, wouldn’t it?

No. It wasn’t. And the wake-up call, like so many others, was brutal. Even a dozen lifetimes’ worth of training wouldn’t have been enough to prepare him for what it was like. All the words and warnings in the universe couldn’t brace him for a complete overhaul of his entire existence, the rewriting of everything that had made him who he was. It had thrown him into chaos, cut him down to size and then rebuilt him from the ground up, and for those first few maddening weeks he really had started to believe that nothing would ever surprise him again.

Then he met Nilani Kahn.

Later, whenever someone had the gall to ask what a smart young woman like her was doing with a no-hoper like him (which happened often and at great length), Torias would take great pleasure in bragging about how he swept her off her feet with his boyish charm and his rugged good looks. It was love at first sight, he said with a twinkle in his eye, and the damn fools almost always believed him. He’d grin and flex and swagger about like the self-loving young flyboy that still lingered under all those newfound years of wisdom; he’d give them the show they wanted to see, repeat by rote the perfect answer that they wanted to hear, and feed them the bait they wanted to eat. He told a good story, just like he always had, and of course they bought it without a second thought.

For her part, Nilani played along, smiling at the right moments and blushing and ducking her head when the story called for it, going through the motions and indulging his self-obsessed bragging, as dutiful and loving as she always was. She played the part to the hilt, because it amused her just as much as it validated him, and no-one, not even their closest friends, would ever know that it was a lie.

The truth, like so many things, did not paint Torias in such a glowing light.

It started, as so many things in Torias’s life did, in a crowded bar following a particularly adrenaline-pumping test flight. Audrid’s influence was blessedly silent that night; maybe that damned compassion of hers was finally reaching inwards instead of outwards, because he was halfway through his fourth black hole without feeling the slightest inclination to stop, or hearing the least little whisper of ‘responsibility’ or ‘moderation’.

Usually by this point, at least in the last few weeks, he found himself overwhelmed by an alien sense of obligation, a need to put the damn symbiont above himself, like he owed it to the stupid slug to stay sober. It was nonsense, of course, and as he was growing more used to this new life he was likewise growing more familiar with which instincts were his own and which came from those stuffy old dead people. Life was different back in Lela’s day, but as far as Torias was concerned, the best thing he could do for the little creature was show it how to have a good time. The distant hazy thought of going to bed early might be Audrid’s, but the urge to order a fifth drink before he had even finished the fourth was all Torias.

And so he did. What good was he to Dax, after all, if he couldn’t even be true to himself? That fifth drink was a point of pride, Torias standing up for himself and remembering who and what he was, giving a piece of himself to a creature that thrived on new experiences, and he would damn well enjoy every last swallow. And then, after the fifth was gone, he had a sixth. Because, well, why the hell not? After all, he had plenty of reasons to celebrate tonight. Another perfect test-flight of another new engine prototype, which meant another check in the ‘win’ column for the science nerds and another notch in the bedpost of Torias’s already vast ego. Victories all around, so why the hell shouldn’t he indulge himself a little?

He’d even convinced a couple of the science boys to come out too, channelling a little of Tobin’s engine smarts and nodding and smiling at all the right points when they started talking about sub-light speeds and impulse tests. Again, he figured, why not? He had the gift, might as well use it to fuel his nefarious schemes. Frankly, he didn’t care at all what went on under the hoods of his shuttles, so long as they came back in one piece; truth be told, he’d probably test-pilot an Algorian mammoth if they pasted a set of wings on its back, and only hesitate for as long as it took to ask how much they’d pay, but it made them sickeningly happy when he showed an interest, and he figured they’d earned a little joy too.

Besides, he got along pretty well with the science nerds, and all the more so since he was joined and Tobin started flexing his mental muscles; he didn’t have much more patience than he’d ever had before, but he had a better grasp of the basics now, and they appreciated that. He supposed it wasn’t often that one of the flyboys took the time to learn their names, much less pretend to listen while they rambled on about thrusters. Scientists, he’d learned, were like most other people underneath all that pretension: they would become your best friend if you just feigned a little interest in whatever turned them on. And if there was one thing Torias knew about best friends, it was how to talk them into buying the next drink.

So there he was, sitting at the bar with a black hole in each hand and a scientist on either side of him, about to launch into yet another heroic tale about his daredevil piloting escapades… probably the adventure where he’d effortlessly navigated an impromptu ion storm with no sensors and only half an engine; he hadn’t taken that one out for a spin in a while, and his audience was as rapt as he could possibly hope for. The night was young, and for the first time in several weeks he felt like maybe he was still young too. Everything was going wonderfully. 

Which, of course, meant it was doomed to come crashing down.

He didn’t even notice her at first. That was the punchline. Honestly, why would he notice anyone at all when he held the whole quadrant in his hands? He was the one people noticed, and he didn’t have time to turn around and look at them. But then, of course, one of his science friends (well, a ‘friend’ for the evening, anyway, at least for as long as they kept picking up his bar tab) made the mistake of waving her over, calling out her name with too much enthusiasm and too little grace, and that was the end of it.

It wasn’t the most graceful of introductions, but it was the only one they were going to get, and it shamed Torias’s future self to look back and remember that that was how he learned her name. Spilled from the mouth of a half-drunk scientist while trying to dodge the colourful backsplash from an overturned cocktail. Even the great Torias Dax couldn’t deny that it wasn’t exactly a promising moment.

“Nilani!” Naturally, the less-than-lucid scientist didn’t pause to apologise for the spillage of his drink (a perfectly good one, Torias thought sadly as he held his own high and safe above his head). “Nilani Kahn!” He gestured, far too expansively in the small corner of the bar they’d squished themselves into, and Torias had to lean as far back as he could to escape the flailing of his arms. “Over here!”

Torias, of course, was less than pleased about all of this. “I think she heard you the first time,” he muttered, knocking back the rest of his free-hand drink (for reasons of safety, of course, and not at all because he needed the kick to steady himself).

The scientist — Yaros, was it? or maybe Yanos? some pretentious-sounding something, anyway — mumbled a shamefaced apology and swiped futilely at the drenched and sticky bar surface. Torias huffed at the efforts, rolling his eyes turning back to his other-hand black hole. Well, what was left of it, anyway, and he made a point of grumbling loudly and irritably as he swallowed it, vicious little curses through clenched teeth about how scatter-brained science nerds and alcohol made a terrible combination.

“Do they, now?”

Her voice was like her body, soft for the most part but tight at the corners and the edges, just sharp enough to make her point without ever needing to lift above a murmur. Much later, Torias would come to discover that she could be as shrill as anyone he’d ever heard when she wanted to, shriller than a broken engine and just as dangerous… just not in public.

“They do,” he affirmed, flashing his best flyboy grin. “It’s a good thing these guys aren’t that clumsy in the lab, or we’d all be in trouble.”

She snorted. “I’m sure they could say the same about loud-mouthed pilots…”

“Sure they could,” Torias shot back with a cool shrug. “But they’d be wrong.”

She stared at him for a moment, eyes wide, like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing, and that was all it took. Those eyes, striking and stunning, a darker shade of blue than most Trill, but not unnatural. He could get lose in them, he thought, then immediately blamed it on the black hole. Well, he tried to blame it on that, anyway, but there was a tell-tale twitch in his chest already that told him — in Audrid’s voice, of course, and with Tobin’s self-consciousness — that he was in trouble.

It didn’t take more than a glance to see how beautiful she was, and it sure as hell didn’t take five and a half black holes for a sweet-talking charmer like Torias to find himself suddenly in over his head. He talked a good game, but she was already outracing him, already figuring out the places to cut, the best jab to make to disarm him completely, and how the hell was he supposed to compete with that? They hadn’t even passed the standard ‘hello’, and already he was floundering, clamouring for his usual hot-headed bravado, wondering with uncharacteristic nervousness if the trademark Torias charm would be enough to wow this particular catch. She, of course, was clearly loving every second of it, and that put her a few light-years ahead of him already. There was nothing more appealing to a hungry flyboy than a tough chassis, after all, and Torias was nothing if not hungry.

It wasn’t like him to be so eager, though, and it definitely wasn’t like him to be so hopeful. Confident, yes. Flirtatious, sure. Even a little arrogant sometimes, if the girl was good enough. But _hopeful_?

Even before he’d been joined with Dax, Torias had never been the kind to surrender to hope. He’d try to woo his latest target with his charisma and his attitude and a tale or two about the dangerous life of a pilot; he’d turn on the charm and flash a smile, and if that wasn’t good enough, well, it was her loss not his. Rejection was no big deal to a guy like Torias; he’d just shrug it off, congratulate himself on taking the shot, and move on to the next pretty opportunity. Hope never entered into it, not for him. He wasn’t the kind to think about long-term relationships — hell, he wasn’t the type to think about anything in the long term at all, even his own survival, so why should he care if his pick-up du jour was a success or a failure? Plenty more stars in the galaxy, right?

But this was different. She’d looked at him just once, and that was all it took. There was something about her, something he couldn’t escape, something that made him _hopeful_. Maybe it was just the way she looked at him, the way she shrugged him off before he even had a chance to give it a shot, the way she dismissed him as unimportant even before she’d heard a damn word he had to say for himself. It got his blood up, fore sure, and that made him more determined.

There was something about those eyes, those dark deep eyes, those eyes that made him think in poetry. She was practically begging him with those eyes, not to take her but to prove her wrong, to show her that he was worth more than a cheap pick-up line and a cute grin. She wanted to give him a chance, he decided; she wanted him to give her a reason to look twice at him, and so he took it upon himself to make her do just that.

How hard could it be, after all? He’d already wooed most of the bar’s regular patrons in the week he’d been here, hadn’t he, so what was one more? It was easy enough to tell himself that, anyway, to mask the hope with coolness, to hide the feeling that this was more than that, to block out Audrid’s voice telling him that maybe she was different, maybe she deserved more than a patented pick-up, that maybe she wasn’t just another—

 _No,_ he thought, and tried to laugh it off. _Don’t be an idiot, old boy. Don’t listen to that old biddy. What does she know? She’s dead._

Apparently she knew more than he gave her credit for, because this new vision of loveliness seemed to take her side a whole lot more readily than his. She stared at him for about another half-second then turned her back on him completely. There was an air of absolute dismissal in her now, and an airiness as she turned back to Yaros-Yanos-whoever with a toss of her hair and a roll of her eyes.

“Honestly, Vanos,” she said, and when she sighed it was entirely for Torias’s benefit. “Couldn’t you have at least dug up a humanoid pilot this time?”

“Hey!” The protest was a little too quick and a little too loud, but it got her attention well enough. “I’m humanoid enough to navigate an ion storm with no sensors and only—”

“—half an engine,” she finished for him, amusement flashing in those dark eyes. “Yes, yes. I heard you bragging about that last night. And the night before, too, come to think of it…”

Yaros-Yanos-or-apparently-Vanos laughed and shook his head. Torias glared at him, feeling a little betrayed. “I don’t tell it _that_ often,” he muttered.

“Oh, no,” Nilani said with an easy smile. “Of course you don’t. Only when you’re trying to impress pretty young girls.” She eyed Vanos and his science buddy, and her grin widened with calculated mischief. “Or scientists, apparently.”

Torias watched her as she turned away again, allowed himself the luxury of memorising every little detail in the way she moved. The tilt of her head, the sharpness behind her eyes, the wit and cleverness behind the curve of her jaw, the studious look on her face. Torias was no expert in the art of gauging people, and body language beyond the realm of _‘I want you’_ was still very much a mystery to him, but Lela Dax had been something of an expert at that sort of thing and he found himself channelling some of her experience as he looked at this new woman now, this stunning creature who he still wanted to turn into another notch in his bedpost, this woman that dared to make him indulge in things like hope.

It was easy to figure her out, he thought with his usual cockiness, coloured only a little by Lela’s judgement. Her familiarity with Vanos and his fellow scientists, the arrogant disdain as she looked down at Torias like he didn’t deserve to be in their presence at all. He was just a stupid flyboy to her, he could tell, just an instrument in their games of engineering, a body to drop into the seats carved from their research. She was one of _them_ , he decided, a science nerd. Probably just like Vanos, spent all her time in that damn lab. She had to be; it was the only thing that made any sense, and he didn’t know how he knew it with such certainty when they hadn’t even really been introduced yet, but he did. He knew it, with a certainty that must’ve come from one of the others — Lela’s quick judgement or Tobin’s his familiarity with all things geek.

And so, because he could never resist a good challenge (or just a good-looking one), he took his shot.

“Why not both?” he asked. “Pretty girls and scientists aren’t exactly mutually exclusive…” He leered a little. “As I’m sure you’ll attest.”

She stared at him for a long moment, like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing, then rolled her eyes with an exaggerated huff. Still, though, Lela’s powers of observation couldn’t help noticing the hint of a blush just flickering at the base of her neck, an involuntary response to the flattery, and he wondered if she didn’t hear that as often as she should. For all of her haughtiness, her outfit wasn’t exactly scientific either, and he didn’t need Lela’s skills to deduce anything from that. Her blouse was too low-cut to really fit in among all those stuffy intellectual types, and her skirt was way too short to be called practical. Maybe she dabbled in the sciences during her free time, maybe even thought of herself as a geek, but it was obvious that she wasn’t the kind of obsessive closet case that Vanos and his friends were. It sure as hell wouldn’t take an hour’s coercion to get her to spend a night outside the lab. Of that, at least, he was sure.

“I’m glad you’re here, Nilani,” Vanos was jabbering, oblivious to the rising tension. “The test flight threw up some questions, particularly about the propulsion systems, and I was wondering if you’ve had time yet to look over the—”

“Now?” Torias sputtered, offended on the poor woman’s behalf. “Really, Ya— _Vanos_. Can’t you leave the work in the lab for five minutes and let the lady enjoy a drink?”

Vanos stared at him like he’d just suggested they all get down and dirty right there on the bar. “Well, I only thought… since we’re all here…”

“We’re here to _drink_ ,” Torias reminded him, quite firmly. “And to have a good time. Now, I know you science gee— _people_ think that propulsion systems and quantum theories are the makings of a great party, but I’m here to tell you, buddy, they’re not. And even if they were, those of who actually step outside the little white box once in a while need to unwind and catch our breath. You know?” Not that he was calculating his chances already or anything, but he was at least 70% sure that the guarded look Nilani shot him was at least slightly grateful, and the attention bolstered him to drive the point home. “Look, I know this stuff is important to you guys, but you can’t hole yourselves up in those laboratories every waking minute. Live a little, will you?”

It didn’t surprise him in the least that Vanos seemed rather less than convinced. If he’d had his way, Torias knew, he’d still be down there in that damned lab right now, poring away over equations and theories and a million other things that frankly could wait the weekend — or even the month — was over. What did surprise him, however, was the unlikely ally he found in Nilani. She was the one to step up, to smile and agree with him, to wave down the bartender and order a frothy-looking cocktail. She didn’t meet Torias’s eye at all as she did it, but he didn’t really expect her to. Besides, the drink spoke for itself.

“What?” she asked, laughing at the look on Vanos’s face. She had a beautiful laugh, Torias thought, but was smart enough to keep that to himself. The flattery would come later, he decided, and Audrid nodded her approval at his patience. “The idiot pilot makes a good point.”

“Hey,” he cried. “This ‘idiot pilot’ knows a thing or two about propulsion too, you know.” And there it was, the perfect opportunity for the perfect boast, and he took it with the same passion and precision he applied in the cockpit. “One of my former hosts was a genius, as it happens. An engineer, best in his field.” He grinned, the Torias charm touched by Tobin’s intelligence. “Oh, the things I could tell you about phase coil inverters…”

“Please don’t,” Nilani deadpanned, but he could tell she wanted to grin back. “My dear friend Vanos won’t ever let you hear the end of it if you do.” She did smile then, blinding and beautiful, and slung an arm across his shoulders. “Besides, weren’t you just saying a moment ago that there’s more to life than propulsion systems and phase coil inverters?”

Vanos snorted, as haughty and derisive as Nilani had been a moment ago. “Her ‘dear friend’,” he huffed. “I’d say I’m rather more than that. If it wasn’t for me, she’d never have been joined.” That got Torias’s interest, but before he could say anything Vanos rushed on. “I have a cousin on the Symbiosis Commission, you know, and if I hadn’t put in a good word on behalf of my ‘dear friend’…”

“Vanos…” The look on Nilani’s face was positively lethal; it was the first time Torias had seen her affected by anything, and it was a terrifying sight indeed.

Wisely, Vanos censored himself quickly. “Well, ah, anyway…” He coughed. “How is the symbiont settling in?”

Nilani shrugged, and seemed to turn inward for a moment or two. Her entire demeanour changed, then, and Torias realised that she was channeling the influence of a former host. He’d seen the same changes in himself a few times since his own joining, watching his face in the mirror for hours on end those first few days when he wasn’t sure who was what and what was who. He remembered how it felt, those subtle little changes, one moment bringing a sudden tightness in his shoulders, the next bringing an unnatural twitch to his lips, the next sending a shiver up his spine. There was so much, so much input, so much conflict inside himself, and it was so difficult at first to keep it all straight.

Nilani must be recently joined too, he realised, and for the first time since Vanos waved her over he found that the smile on his lips had nothing to do with the cut of her blouse or the colour of her eyes.

“Well enough,” Nilani was saying, apparently unaware of Torias’s sudden interest. “We’re both still adjusting, of course… but that’s to be expected.”

She sounded so scientific about it, so clinical, like the whole act of joining was just academic. Torias, thinking of his own struggles, almost felt a little jealous of her for that. No doubt his own transition had been just as straightforward as hers, at least on that ever-important technical level, but it sure as hell hadn’t felt that way at the time. Truth be told, even now there were times when it still didn’t feel that way. He was still confused, still a little lost, and it angered him a little to see her so blasé about the whole thing, talking about taking on all those new personalities like it was so damn easy. Hell, he thought angrily, maybe it really was that easy for a scientist, but it was a whole lot harder for an idiot pilot.

Still, he didn’t say any of that out loud. It was bad enough that she’d rattled him, after all, bad enough that she’d thrown him off his game and made him think at all. He sure as hell wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of seeing that she’d done it. Instead, he did what he did best — what _Torias_ did best, even if Tobin thought it was a bad idea and Emony threw her hands up in despair — and shook it off with a smirk and a shrug.

“Well, yeah,” he said, all false swagger and bravado. “But it’s easy enough to adjust if you know how to deal with it, right? That’s what the training’s for, after all…” He patted his belly with exaggerated affection, a kind that he definitely didn’t feel right now, with those old windbags rolling their eyes at his choices. “And it’s _so_ worth it, don’t you think?”

Nilani stared at him, like he’d just asked the most pointless and ridiculous question she’d ever heard. “Of course I do,” she said. “Do you think I would’ve have applied for the initiate program in the first place if I didn’t think that?”

Torias, who hated being called out even at the best of times, flushed hot with anger. In the back of his mind, he could hear Emony laughing, and bit down the urge to tell her exactly where she could shove her self-satisfaction.

“Don’t get smart,” he shot back at Nilani, reacting instinctively to his wounded pride before his Audrid-shaped compassion had a chance to butt in and tell him it was a bad idea. “I’m new at this, okay? I’m still figuring it out.”

“He is _very_ new,” Vanos chimed in, uninvited and entirely unwelcome. Nilani laughed again, and Torias decided that the sound wasn’t quite so endearing when it came at his expense. Vanos, clearly enjoying this too much, pressed on with an acid smile. “How long have you been joined now, Torias? Barely three weeks, isn’t it?” He sighed loudly, eyes on Nilani. “If you ask me, it’s criminal that they cleared him to get back into the cockpit so soon.”

Torias huffed a sullen sigh. “She didn’t ask you,” he said. “No-one did.”

Clearly losing patience with them both, Nilani rolled her eyes and ordered another round of drinks. _Beautiful and generous,_ Torias thought with a little grin, already salivating at the thought of another free drink. _She really does have it all._

“Can’t we all just get along?” she asked, and though she sounded sincere enough, there was something in her voice that made it pretty clear she’d secretly prefer if they didn’t. She liked seeing them argue, Torias thought. Not necessarily over her, but in general. He got the distinct impression — or perhaps Lela did, and was feeling generous enough to share it — that Nilani was at her most comfortable surrounded by other people’s conflicts.

“Don’t look at me,” Torias said, flashing his most winning smile. “I’m a perfect gentleman. Just ask any of my fellow pilots, they’ll tell you.”

“That’s not all they’d tell you,” Vanos quipped. He sounded exaggeratedly weary, like Torias’s company was the heaviest burden he could imagine; inside his head, Torias was sure he heard Emony huffing her agreement. “They’d also tell you, probably in great detail, about his ego. And his arrogance. And his—”

“Thanks for that,” Torias said with a sigh, and threw up his hands. He wasn’t particularly bothered by his shallow reputation; no doubt Nilani had figured all that out for herself by now, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant to hear it repeated. “This is what happens when I do a nice thing. Treat the guy to a night on the town, buy him a few drinks, and this is the thanks I get for it. I tell you, there’s no justice in the world.”

Nilani dismissed the diatribe with a wave of her perfectly-manicured hand. “You’re newly joined as well?” she asked Torias, looking him up and down, as though seeing him for the first time.

There was an edge to her voice, a hint of something intangible that said she wasn’t just asking out of curiosity, that said she had something very specific in mind. It was a little unnerving, that look on her face, but still he nodded and smiled and looked thoughtful because it gave them something in common, a mutual interest that he hoped they could discuss in more intimate detail later, in the comfort and privacy of his quarters.

“It’s definitely an interesting experience,” he said with a wry grin.

“That’s certainly one way of putting it.” She snorted, like she was talking to an idiot or a child, or possibly an idiot child. “So tell me, then…” She hesitated for a second. “Torias, was it?”

“Indeed it is,” he said, extending a hand for her to shake, like it was the greatest honour he could bestor on anyone. “Torias Dax, fifth host of the Dax symbiont. You may have heard of us.”

Nilani stared at him, disbelief mingling with a kind of amusement that clearly came against her better judgement. She didn’t quite laugh again, but it was a close thing, and the young man’s heart that still beat in Torias’s chest (despite the best efforts of those stuck-up former hosts) gave an optimistic little flutter. She didn’t let the moment get the better of her, though, and when she looked away, her eyes were cool and cynical.

Still, a shot was a shot, and Torias was an expert in the art of taking what he could get, even if it meant disappointment in the end. Emony and the others could get on his back all they wanted, but they couldn’t kill the optimist in him, the defining trait that made him Torias, the thing that made him different from them. They couldn’t take his optimism, couldn’t take his lust for life, couldn’t take away the thing that made him who he was. Let them judge him for it all they liked, he thought; he didn’t care. If there was one thing he could bring to the Dax symbiont, one thing that was just his, it was that, and not even haughty Emony would silence it.

“Torias,” Nilani hummed, running the name over her tongue like a purr. “Tell me, then, _Torias_ …”

“I’ll tell you anything you like,” he blurted out, and four dead Daxes simultaneously slapped their foreheads.

Nilani smiled, cool and calculating. “How many of your symbiont’s former hosts were female?”

It was an odd question, and it caught him a little off-guard. He blinked, but only for a moment, then saw the opportunity she’d given him and grabbed it with both hands. “Three,” he said with a smug little flourish, holding up three fingers of one hand as he drained his drink with the other. “You’ve probably already heard of Emony Dax. She was kind of a big deal.” It pained him to say so, but what was the harm when he could just blame the arrogance on her? Torias wasn’t the only Dax to have an ego, after all. “And, of course, the lovely Lela—”

“Yes, yes.” Nilani said, cutting him off with a bored wave. “I didn’t ask for a list. It’s just…” Those dark eyes flashed for a moment, darkening even deeper with a kind of sorrow. “Well, it’s just such a shame, that’s all.”

Torias frowned. He could sense a trap, knew that something wasn’t right, but for all that he knew he was rising to some kind of bait still he wasn’t quite sharp enough to work out what it was. “What is?”

Nilani smiled. “All that female intuition, and you still don’t know the first thing about women.”

For the first time in his brash young life, Torias had no response.

Sensing her victory — and perhaps sensing just as well that it was a rare and precious thing against someone like him — Nilani chose that moment to take her leave. Torias supposed he couldn’t blame her for that; it was a hell of a note to leave on, and she’d made damn sure he’d remember her. She finished her drink in a single swallow, watching the way Torias watched, then slid gracefully down from her barstool.

“Well,” she said, and Torias tried very hard not to stare as she licked the moisture from her lips. “Thanks for the company, Torias Dax. I can’t say it was a pleasure… though I’m sure you’ll tell your fellow pilots it was anyway.”

Torias opened his mouth to argue, but no sound came out.

“I thought so,” she said, looking entirely too pleased with herself, then tilted her head at Vanos. “I’ll go through those propulsion ideas with you in the lab tomorrow, first thing.”

Vanos harrumphed and scowled as she sauntered off, characteristically moody in spite of all the drinks he had in him, and muttering furiously under his breath about all the people who refused to take him or his work seriously. Torias would have laughed at the self-righteousness of it all, but he was too busy watching the vision of loveliness that was Nilani’s departure.

“Wait and see, my friend,” he murmured. “One day, I’m going to marry that girl.”


	2. Chapter 2

And he did.

It was easy enough to track her down again, knowing as he did that she worked in close quarters with the other scientists. He was their pet pilot, after all, and he didn’t need much of an excuse to force his way into their precious laboratory under the guise of asking questions about their next test-flight. A few choice insights from that stick-in-the-mud genius Tobin, a pinch of Lela’s focus and just a little of Emony’s self-importance, and he would give as good as he got, asking and answering complex mathematical questions with ease and panache, acting for all the world like he belonged there as much as any of them. Like the charismatic animal that he was, he waltzed into their precious territory and peed all over it.

Nilani, of course, didn’t buy his posturing there any more than she had in the bar. Torias had no idea who her previous hosts were or what they’d done, but from the way she looked at him he kind of suspected she was living with a half-dozen lifetimes’ worth of Emony, or at least a generation or two of Lela. She was all judgement and superiority, all better-than-you and faster-than-you, and if he hadn’t still been nurturing that slow-burning flicker of hope he probably would have given her up that first night in the bar. She didn’t let him get away with anything, and she always made him think, and frankly that was more work than any woman should be worth.

Honestly, he didn’t know why he pursued her as ardently as he did, why he didn’t just give it up and call it quits when it first became clear that she wouldn’t make it easy for him. No doubt it was Emony’s influence again, that bull-headed arrogance, the dogged determination, the eyes-on-the-prize attitude and the stubborn refusal to quit even after he’d been knocked down for the fourth time in a night. Masochist that she was, it had to be Emony who made him like this, because the more Nilani riposted his advances, the more Torias wanted her.

And it wasn’t just want, either. Want, he could deal with; hell, he dealt with it himself a few dozen times a week. He was as hot-blooded as the next flyboy, a supernova of energy and adrenaline, always out for the next rush, the next high, the next thrill, and he’d always treated women in much the same way he treated the aircraft or shuttlecraft or whatever else he was riding; they were good for a test-drive or two, then it was on to the next one without a second thought. Putting in the hard work wasn’t exactly a key feature in Torias’s big book of seduction.

But here he was, doing just that. This wasn’t a textbook Torias seduction, not even close. He wasn’t just riding her once or twice and then moving on; he was actively courting her, actually behaving like the sophisticated gentleman he so often pretended to be. Suddenly, putting in the hard work was second nature. Suddenly he was so far away from that cocksure flyboy that they might as well have been two different people. He was showing up at her workplace, showing an almost-genuine interest in propulsion systems and quantum physics and all the rest of it, even playing nice with the other nerds in the lab. Hell, he was even doing homework during his free time, skimming through blueprints and schematics for his next test shuttle, checking out the systems and the engines and anything else he thought a science brain might be interested in, finding as much fuel as he could to win her over, or even just make her smile. It was ridiculous. It was stupid, and it was _hopeful_.

The crazy part was, it actually worked.

When she didn’t have a drink or two inside of her, Nilani Kahn wasn’t quite so quick with her wit, and that helped too. Oh, she was still no wallflower, still gave as good as she god when it came down to it, but she was a lot more reserved in the kingdom of the nerds than she had been on Torias’s turf in the bar. Here, she wasn’t the fast-talking woman who had been hit on a few thousand too many times, the quick-witted young lady who’d seen it all before and was long past the point of being impressed. Here, she was just a scientist, just like all the others. Here, she was, all work and no play, all concentration and focus and attention to detail, all those things that science geeks enjoyed far too much for Torias’s taste. She was one of them, in a way she hadn’t been during their first meeting, and though it should’ve turned his eye elsewhere, instead it just made him all the more passionate.

It also made his job easier. Unlike the science boys and lab-bound geeks he was used to, he’d at least seen Nilani cut loose and enjoy herself once before. Her favourite place might still be the lab, and he supposed he could respect her for that — Lela, at least, admired a good work ethic, and Tobin kept him up many a night yammering about how fulfilling research could be — but this hardworking bookish genius was the very same woman as the one he’d met at the bar that night, the one who’d shot her mouth off and tossed him aside. He’d seen them both now, and knew that it wouldn’t take much to bring them together.

So he did just that. He played the curious amateur when he was on the clock, taking notes and asking questions when he thought of them, dedicating every conversation to engines and propulsion and mathematics, feeding the modest curiosity he’d inherited from Tobin and acting the part of the attentive student. He gave her what she wanted, and found that he actually enjoyed learning nearly as much as he pretended to. On her turf, he played by her rules, but after hours the game was his. He’d take her back to the bar and trade quips, buy her a drink one night and let her buy him one the next. He’d lead the way, and she’d follow, not just because he was cute but because he’d paid for his fun with hard work. He felt like he’d earned it, and that made it feel like it meant more.

He got to know the different sides of her, the scientist and the barfly, and through her he uncovered the different sides of her former hosts, too. It didn’t take more than a couple of drinks in either of them to talk about being joined, and maybe that helped him come to terms with Dax too. Nilani was a lot less haughty about the whole thing without her friends around to impress, and Torias was a lot less of a cocky flyboy without his. Alone, without the pressure of performing, they fit better. When she confessed her insecurities to him more comfortably than to her science friends, it was because he understood, because he was joined too, because her struggles were his and he’d earned enough respect for her to care what he had to say about it. Scientists were great for making stuff fly, he thought, but they didn’t do much for the living breathing creatures. You couldn’t show weakness in front of a genius; they’d pick you to pieces before you’d gotten a word out, and dissect all the dozens of reasons why that weakness was wrong. That was no good to anyone, and Torias found that he found his own kind of comfort in giving Nilani a refuge from all that academic posturing.

Tobin’s memories had taught him about that, too. Torias may never have been particularly smart himself, but Tobin was, and he’d felt the cut of his peers’ jeering, deep enough to bleed and scar over, raw and brutal enough to twist his tongue into a stutter and turn his eyes to the ground any time someone tried to address him. It had hurt, Torias knew, and he knew as well that not all of Tobin’s painful shyness came from within.

Nilani, of course, saw that right away. She saw it even before Torias did, and it was only when she pointed it out that he realised she was right. She saw a kindred spirit in Tobin, a kind of empathy in the troubled memories that were still only just beginning to surface, and that coupled with the patented Torias charm to appeal to both sides of her. It wasn’t long at all before his visits to the science labs and their evenings in the bar grew longer, easier, and it wasn’t long either before they both started finding excuses to drag out the hours way beyond the inevitable _“I should go…”_ Casual touches, once friendly and casual, took on deeper meaning and lingered just a heartbeat longer than they should have, until even Nilani couldn’t deny the thing that Torias had known all along: that somehow this had become a courtship.

She even used that word, too, ‘courtship’, like they were forbidden lovers from some centuries-old story, she a wealthy heiress promised to some rich jackass with a title and he the hired help determined to win her heart against all the odds. The reality wasn’t quite so far from that as either of them would like to think; it didn’t matter that they were both joined, both equal in the eyes of Trill society, because they both knew that she was worth ten of him in all the places that mattered. Not that it mattered, of course, because by the time the scientist in Nilani finally opened its eyes and saw the truth — that maybe they weren’t ‘just friends’ after all, that maybe there wasn’t anything ‘casual’ about the time they spent together any more, that maybe her feelings for him weren’t so ‘innocent’ after all — Torias was already halfway towards a proposal.

In characteristic Torias style (if not entirely Dax style), it was more by necessity than any kind of sweeping romantic gesture. First and foremost, their professional lives weren’t going to align forever; the project was reaching its end, and so too were their respective places on it. Two or three more test flights, and they’d have no need for a pilot at all, and Nilani’s presence was fast becoming more about keeping the mood light than contributing any actual research. She wasn’t entirely qualified, but she was smart and good humoured, and that was enough for the eggheads in charge, at least while they still had some paperwork to throw around. That was science in a nutshell, it seemed, at least towards the end of a project like this, but it was pretty clear to Torias that she was itching to get out of that lab and into one that would put her talents to better use. In short, time was running short for both of them, and it would be sooner rather than later that it ultimately dragged them to opposite corners of the planet. Or, worse, the galaxy. And Torias had no intention of letting that happen.

He had other reasons too, of course, of a far shallower persuasion. As it turned out, the sharp-witted woman who had so easily outsmarted him on their first meeting was traditional in more than just her use of the word ‘courtship’. She accepted without blinking the occasional stolen kiss, whispered words on the sly, hands held under the table, even occasional illicit groping when she’d had a few drinks (though that, she always insisted, was the work of a former host who had always been too quick with his hands). A little bit of this, a little bit of that, but never anything more. If he so much as thought of asking her back his quarters, he’d learned quickly that the night would end right there and then. There was no debate no room for discussion; it was simply the way things were.

For a while, Torias had just assumed she was shy, nervous about her lack of experience and his abundance of it. He’d flattered himself that he intimidated her, that she was self-conscious and embarrassed, so sure that she’d outshine him in the bedroom. He’d built up a whole evening around it, gentle words and kind reassurances, but when he tried to tell her that there was nothing to worry about, she just laughed in his face and told him in no uncertain terms that he would be far better occupied in dealing with his own ‘worries’ than thinking about hers.

“So, what’s the problem, then?” he whined (and would kick himself for hours afterwards, thinking of how much he’d sounded like a spoiled and sullen child).

“The problem?” she echoed, putting hi in his place as she so often did with a quirked brow and a shake of her head. “The _problem_ , old boy, is that I don’t feel like it.”

He couldn’t very well argue with that, could he? So he didn’t. He respected her too much to try, and once she’d put it like that it just seemed silly. So he settled for what they had, what they were, and tried not to think about the things he’d given up, the things he was missing out on. He just enjoyed the time they had when they were together, and took a shameful number of cold showers when they weren’t; it worked well enough, even if it wasn’t ideal, and that was no price at all to pay for the privilege of having her on his arm.

And in between all those things — between planning his next job and listening to her talk of going back to school, between courting her in daylight and taking cold showers at night, between falling into debt and falling in love — he found himself thinking more and more about things like marriage.

The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if he could blame Audrid for it. Torias had never been the kind to think about settling down, about starting a family or putting a ring on any finger, no matter how beautiful or graceful or how much she rocked his world. He sure as hell wasn’t the kind to do that just to get a girl into bed; it was too much hard work for too little reward, and he had better things to do with his time, thank you. Honestly, half the time, setting himself up for breakfast was too big a commitment for him, and he’d definitely never been the kind of guy to cry himself to sleep over the idea that he might be separated from his girl for a while when their respective jobs were over.

By his usual standards, this should have been a blessing. Weeks had turned to months already without so much as a hint of time between the sheets. His time remained completely full with one woman and yet his bed remained woefully empty; by his usual standards, he should have been thanking his lucky stars for the forced distance that would put an end to this damn torture. No more cold showers, no more dashed hopes; he should be celebrating, shouldn’t he? He should have taken the opportunity for what it was, pulled her aside and told her that it was a great run, that it had been fun and great and all that stuff that girls liked to hear, that it was nice while it lasted but he had another job already lined up and she wanted to go back to school anyway and, well, ain’t that just the way it goes?

He should have been doing all of those things, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t kissing her goodbye, wasn’t thanking his lucky stars that he’d got away so painlessly, wasn’t already planning his first conquest as soon as he got free. Instead — and he still couldn’t understand why — he was thinking about marriage. Marriage, the one thing he’d never wanted. Suddenly, where he should’ve been priming his engines for departure, instead he was spending all those endless nights alone between cold sheets thinking not of X-rated holonovels but of the perfect ring to fit her perfect hand.

He proposed over dinner one evening. She was in the midst of a diatribe about the casual sexism in the lab, and Torias was pretending to pay attention while secretly thinking of absolutely anything else. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about her struggles; it was just that she’d given this exact same speech four times that week. As romantic settings went, it was far from ideal, but Torias was a master at making the best of any situation, and if it wasn’t perfect on its own he’d just have to make it perfect himself.

“So…” he said, letting the word slide off his tongue without the least effort, like it was just something he’d been thinking about off-hand, like it wasn’t anything important at all.

Nilani gave him a sharp look. “Torias…” she said, and it was only when he heard the danger in her voice that he realised he’d interrupted her mid-sentence, maybe even mid-word if the look on her face was anything to go by; it would hardly be the first time if it was. “I thought we’d discussed this.”

He fumbled for a half-assed apology, though they both knew better than to expect him to salvage this now. “Sorry, love,” he mumbled. “I wasn’t really paying much attention. I’ve had a lot on my mind this week, you see, and…”

“You always have ‘a lot on your mind’,” she said. “Which is something of a miracle, if you ask me, since there’s not much of a mind there in the first place. One day, Torias, those wandering thoughts of yours will get you into trouble.” He smirked and opened his mouth to counter, but she cut him off with a wave of her hand. “ _Real_ trouble, Torias, and not just with me.”

She didn’t really sound annoyed, more like exasperated, and he supposed he couldn’t really blame her for that. They had this same conversation about a thousand times a week, and it always ended the same way, with him apologising and her rolling her eyes and telling him that he’d land himself in trouble if he wasn’t careful. If she was anyone else, he would’ve probably found the dramatics aggravating by now, but when it was his Nilani all he could think about was how adorable it was when her nose crinkled, how bright her eyes got when she rolled them. It was beautiful, the way she got exasperated, and seeing it in her now, the crinkle-nosed exasperation and the bright-eyed disdain, the way that she threw up her hands and overreacted to the least little thing… all of that just made him even more determined to see this stupid idea through.

“I mean it this time,” he said, trying to sound as sincere as he felt. His hands were shaking, he realised, and was glad that they were safely out of sight under the table. “I’ve been thinking…”

“I suppose there’s a first time for everything,” she replied, deadpan, but there was a smile on her face that told him she was willing to hear him out, that she would give him a chance — like she always did — to explain himself.

“Give a guy a break,” he said. “It’s not easy finding time to think when you’re a pilot, you know. It’s all life and death and split-second decisions. You never know when something will—”

“All right,” she said, cutting him off far more sharply than she had any reason to, and when he frowned his surprise at her it cut him to the quick to find that her hands were shaking as well.

That particular change had come about slowly and subtly, just as their courtship had. At first when she stopped calling him ‘idiot pilot’, he’d just assumed that it was an acknowledgement of how hard he worked in the lab; he tried to better himself, tried to learn, and he channelled Tobin effectively enough that she could tell he was serious. He thought it was a kind of reward, like she was accepting into the privileged circle of science geeks, and hadn’t thought much more about it than that. In truth, once they became official, he’d half-expected her to start saying it again, to start calling him her idiot pilot as one of those silly ‘terms of endearment’ that women loved so much.

She hadn’t, though. After a point, she never said it again, and as things grew more serious between them, as their feelings grew deeper and their courtship grew longer, Torias couldn’t help noticing how she started paying attention to his job, keeping track of his test flights, running over probabilities when she knew he’d be involved; it was sweet, if unnecessary, the way she paid much more attention to what he did and how dangerous it was, how much it seemed to matter to her. Once or twice, though they’d both deny it, he’d even caught a flash of fear on her face when they bid each other farewell on the night before a particularly exciting flight. She was worried about him, to the point that every now and then she even tried to talk him out of going at all. It was fruitless, of course, but it meant more than he thought it would that she cared enough to try.

He loved that, he found. He loved the way that she cared, and loved all the more the way she tried so hard to hide how much, the way she shrouded her concern with rolled eyes and disdain, the way she shrugged and huffed and pretended to be annoyed even when they both knew that she was just scared. She was a scientist, she insisted time and time again; she knew what went on in those labs, and she knew when a test flight was especially dangerous. It was just basic common sense to be wary when she knew what went on under the hood of that shuttle he loved so much.

Of course, Torias’s own feeling on the matter was quite different. So far as he was concerned, the greater the danger, the greater the fun; he was a huge advocate of the ‘big risk, big reward’ school of thinking, though he’d admittedly been tempered a little since the joining. Lately, he found that he was softer, soft enough to think it was sweet and not suffocating when Nilani worried about him, and he had enough of Lela’s wisdom and enough of Tobin’s intelligence to concede that maybe she had a point after all. He knew better than to say so aloud, of course; there were few things in the galaxy less reassuring than telling someone they were right to be worried, and so instead — because he cared more about preserving her feelings than proving his own comprehension — he just told her that she was being silly. She was too close to the science of it, he said, too much of a geek for her own good, and it was only natural that she’d overreact.

He didn’t tell her, either, that he secretly kind of hoped she was right to worry so much. He was a pilot, after all, still _Torias_ , and no amount of symbiont wisdom could sever him completely from the thrill of danger.

Right now, however, the danger he was facing came from an entirely different source. For a start, his feet were firmly on the ground now, which in its own way made it all the more unnerving. He was at home among the clouds and the stars, in the void of space or the thin air of the stratosphere. Being grounded was unnatural to a guy like him, and it made him nervous. Right now, every nerve in his body was on fire, like the moment before a countdown only so much worse because this time there would be no G-force, no free-fall, no flying. It was a different kind of fear, a different kind of danger, but it echoed with just enough of the same old thrill to push him forward. Adrenaline pounding like blood in his ears, anticipation singing like engines in his ears, excitement and fear kicking like fuel in his chest. It spurred him on, _danger_ , and before he even realised he was thinking them, the words were out there.

“You want to get married?”

Apparently, she was as surprised by the outburst as he was. Her eyes went wide, mouth dropped open, and when she stared at him, it was with the disbelief of someone who was absolutely certain her partner had lost his mind.

“I’m sorry?” she managed. “What did you just say?”

“Married,” he repeated, voice even, like it was the most natural thing in the world, like it was no big deal, like it happened all the time, like he wasn’t more scared in this moment than he had ever been in his life. “You want to?”

He watched her carefully, eyes locked on her face, breath hitching in his throat as he watched her try to catch hers. Her face was always so expressive, always so open and so honest even when she wasn’t saying anything at all; it was one of the things he loved most about her. He could see the wheels turning in her head, cogs and gears, synapses doing their job, the scientist in her working through what she’d heard, carefully weighing up the evidence, the facts, attentive to every little detail, in this just as she was in everything else. It was enthralling, watching her think, and he recognised the spark in her as it all came together, the moment she realised that this wasn’t a joke, that this wasn’t one of his inappropriate moments, that he wasn’t just being a smart-mouthed flyboy, that this was real and he was serious, that he meant every word he had just said, that he really would take her for his wife if she’d only let him.

“Are you serious?” she asked, even as she knew.

“Yep,” he said, keeping his voice light, keeping his expression cool and airy, steadying every part of him that she could see so she wouldn’t notice the parts he couldn’t keep from shaking. “And you know I don’t make a habit of being serious for just anyone. You’re my exception.”

He meant it in more ways than one, and she knew that just as well as he did. Still, she kept right on staring at him like he hadn’t said anything at all, no doubt still fixated on the question. “Torias…”

“What?” he asked, praying that he’d come off more casual than he felt. “You love me. I love you. We love each other. It’s perfect. _We’re_ perfect.”

“We are…” she agreed slowly, because there was no arguing with that, no arguing with how neatly they fit together, or the countless ways they complemented and completed each other. “But this is a big commitment, Torias. _Marriage_. It’s not… it’s not one of your little test-flights, you know. It’s not something you can do on a whim, just strap yourself in and hope for the best. Once you’re in, you’re in for the rest of your life… the rest of _our_ lives.”

“I know” he said, very serious. “And that’s what I want.” He sighed, taking the moment to steady himself as much as to gather his thoughts. “Look. I’ve been in this hellhole for weeks, running the same damn test flights over and over while you and your buddies in the science lab recalibrate their propulsion systems by a tenth of a per cent or whatever, and it’s finally over. It’s finally _over_ , babe, and I’m so damn happy about that. I’m ready to go someplace new, do something new, fly a new ship. I’m ready to move on with my life and get the hell out of here, and I’m so damn _happy…_ until I think about you.”

“Torias…” she whispered again, but there was no disbelief in her now.

“Right,” he said. “Because it’s great. It’s great that I’m moving on, great that I’m going someplace else, great that I finally get to do something new. But every time I get happy about it, I remember that it means I’ve got to leave _you_. And I don’t want that. I’d sooner stay in this worthless hellhole for the rest of my life — hell, even for the rest of my _symbiont’s_ life — if it means I get to stay with you.” He shut his eyes for a moment, breathing deep; he wasn’t usually one for making big speeches, and it was hard to concentrate when she was looking at him like that. “I don’t like feeling that way, ’Lani. It’s not good for me, or the slug. I don’t want to stick around some place I hate just so I can keep seeing you. I don’t want to _want_ to do that. I want…” He felt a sudden wave of emotion, sharp and forceful, and blamed Audrid by instinct, even though they all knew that, for once, it was all Torias. “I want to take you with me. Wherever I go, whatever I do, whatever new stuff I get to play with. I want to take you with me.”

“You think you can take me up in those death-traps of yours?” she asked, teasing but also sober; she knew how serious he was, and how rare a thing that was. “You can’t take me everywhere, Torias.”

“I know,” he said, pouting just a little. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t have you to come home to.”

She blinked at that, then frowned, as though the admission was somehow more of a shock than the proposal itself. “Well,” she said, “who would’ve thought it? Torias Dax, the hopeless romantic…”

“Only for you, baby,” he replied with a trademark smirk.

Nilani rolled her eyes, though she must’ve been expecting that. “There’s the Torias I know,” she sighed. “Ruining a wonderful moment by being himself.” She shook her head, then grew thoughtful once more, mind back on the subject at hand. “I don’t know. It really is a big commitment. Besides, I had plans of my own, you know. I’m a scientist, not a housewife—” He opened his mouth to protest, but she held up a hand to silence him before he had the chance. “I know, I know. You weren’t planning to make me one. But that’s not really the point, is it? You’re a pilot. You’ll go to the ends of the galaxy and back again, and I… that wasn’t part of the plan.”

“What ‘plan’?” Torias asked.

“ _My_ plan,” she told him. “It wasn’t part of _my_ plan, Torias. It wasn’t part of the plan to go running all over the galaxy after a husband who’s hell-bent on flying out to his death three times a week. It wasn’t part of the plan to spend the rest of my life my life biting my nails and worrying about whether or not you’ll be coming home this time, whether or not this is the flight that’ll make me a widow. None of that was part of the plan.”

What she meant, he thought, was that _he_ wasn’t part of her precious plan. “Plans change,” he said, but there was an edge in his voice that he couldn’t quite control.

“That’s easy for you to say,” she told him. “Mine’s the one that’s changing. I don’t see you offering to change yours for me.”

“Hey,” he said, trying not to get annoyed. “You said you wanted to go back to school. You said you wanted to go back and study astrophysics, or whatever.”

“Quantum physics,” she reminded him, and the characteristic exasperation in her tone — she’d corrected him on this point a dozen times this week alone — was a relief to both of them. “Do you ever listen?”

He scowled. “But that’s my point, Nilani. You can do that. You can go back to school. You can study and I can fly, and we’ll be together all the time and it’ll be wonderful. Don’t you think it’ll be wonderful?”

She didn’t say anything, but her silence told him everything he needed to know. She did think that, but she didn’t want to say so aloud just yet, while things were so delicate. He knew how much she loved her books, how much it thrilled her to learn, to explore new branches of knowledge, to understand new things; she was a scientist in the truest sense of the word, a vibrant soul brought to life by the wonders of discovery, of exploration and expanding her mind, and he could see by the way her eyes got bright, diamonds ignited with flame, that it thrilled her to think of having the freedom to learn everything she wanted. To study, to further expand that brilliant mind of hers, and the mind of her symbiont too, to embrace the purest corners of science while her husband did all the heavy lifting, the work that kept their home in order, the kind that paid the rent on the modest little home he’d already imagined for them. The idea was intoxicating, and he could tell that she was tempted.

And so, picking the moment perfectly, he went in for the kill. “Look,” he pressed gently. “We can figure out the details. We can make it work. What matters is that we’d be together. We wouldn’t have to worry about work — mine or yours — taking us away from each other. We’d be together. For good.”

She smiled at that, and her whole face lit up. When he looked back at that breathtaking moment, the moment she gave in and said _“yes”_ , he would remember that first of all: the way she lit up. She was so beautiful, so much alight and alive, so radiant that he couldn’t breathe for loving her. She was glowing as she took his hand, more dazzling than any sun he’d ever seen, brighter than anything in the whole damn galaxy. As a pilot, Torias got to see a lot of spectacular sights, stardust and supernovas, but none of it compared to this. Nothing could touch the way Nilani lit up as she reached across the table, took gently him by the hand, and whispered the most beautiful word he’d ever heard.

That night, for the first time, they went home together.

She wasn’t nearly as nervous as he expected her to be. But then, as it turned out, he was nervous enough for them both. That surprised him far more than her cool-headedness, to be honest; for as long as he could remember, he’d taken every opportunity he could to brag about his prowess in the bedroom, just as he did about his prowess in the cockpit, and he’d been entirely justified in bragging about them both. They weren’t too different, really, a tumble in the sack and a tumble in zero-G, and he’d had plenty of chances to explain in great detail the logistics of how true that was. Never in his life had Torias ever been nervous in bed, not even his very first time, so this was entirely new territory.

Audrid, ever the compassionate nurturer, told him that it was because this time actually meant something. Torias got annoyed at that, yelling at her inside his head until she shrank away and shut up. He blamed her for all of this, and not just the nervousness. It was her fault they were engaged, her fault that he hadn’t been able to walk away from this woman as he had the countless others. It was all her fault, her and her damned compassion, and it annoyed him more than he could put into words that she wasn’t the least bit offended when he pointed his fingers and told her so. He remembered her life, her loves, her feelings, and he knew that she thought it was the highest compliment she could receive, that she was actually flattered to be held responsible for this kind of thing, this unforgivable softening in someone so sharp.

He blamed Emony too, of course, because he always blamed her. It was her fault that he was putting so much pressure on himself to perform this time. She was so damn competitive, so determined that every little thing had to be a matter of pride and principle, a matter of life and death, so obsessed with making every second of every minute of every day into a medal-winning performance. As with everything else in his life, Emony was the one to blame for making what should have been a great experience so much harder than it had any reason to be. Sweet mercy, how he hated her.

Tobin and Lela, blessedly, didn’t want anything to do with it. They didn’t have any delightful insight to offer, and he didn’t have anything to blame him for. Their silence was a blessed relief after Audrid’s cloying compassion and Emony’s crazed competitive instincts. Torias was thankful, and would have bought them a drink if he could.

“It’s strange,” Nilani murmured as he lowered her to the bed. “Being joined, I mean. Doing this, and being joined.” She blushed a little, and he kissed the line of spots at her throat as her skin darkened around them, ever gentle and ever more urgent. “I’ve done this a thousand times, in a thousand ways. I’ve been here as a man, as a woman, in more ways than I could count… but at the same time…”

“I know,” he said.

He did. That was both the best and the worst of it. He really did know, all too well, and she must have known that too, must have realised that he was perfectly equipped to understand and to relate. It wasn’t his first time since being joined, but it was the first time he’d felt so connected to those pieces of himself. Before her, before Nilani, things were all so new, so strange; he’d clung fiercely to those parts of him that he remembered, the parts that were uniquely Torias, and forced the others into silence in moments like this. But then she’d come along and he’d been so long without a night like this that he’d almost lost that self-protective instinct, the part that shunted those other voices to the side. It wasn’t his first time since the joining, not like it was hers, but there was a ghost of something new that made it feel like it was.

Fluttering snatches of memory crept into his mind, wrapped themselves around his fingers and guided him, the female form suddenly so much more intimate to him now that he knew how it felt to be one, now that he knew how _she_ felt right now. He knew her body because he’d had a body just like hers; no, he’d had three. Emony, Audrid, and Lela, all so much more experienced in this than Tobin and his lone male anatomy ever was. Tobin had nothing to add, nothing to say, and Torias had only his own memories to guide the parts of him that were still achingly male. He remembered so much better how it felt as a woman, all the different ways that body could know pleasure. In a moment he was beneath, then above, on top and under, and he felt the singing and twitching of nerves under hyper-sensitive skin, the places that felt good, the places that felt better. He remembered everything, and no two memories tasted the same.

It was confusing, but exhilarating. Torias didn’t exactly need help when it came to pleasing his lovers, but of course Emony was as insistent in judging him for this as she was in judging him for everything else he did, deriding and commanding in near-equal measure, telling him to give a hundred and ten per cent if he was going to give anything, or give up and go home now. Audrid, likewise, wouldn’t let him get away with simply being a lover; guided by her, he had to _love_ , really and truly and with all of him. It wasn’t enough to be a body, to be physical and present, to worship her with his hands and his mouth and every other part of him: he had to really mean it. He had to feel it, really feel it, inside himself. _“I love you”_ sounded so hollow when it wasn’t spoken with honesty, she remembered, and coupling was so futile unless it was coupled with feeling.

He took their experiences, Audrid’s and Emony’s, and made them his own. He took Lela’s too, with her quiet authority and resolute seriousness. He took them all and let them become a part of him, but never too big a part. Never so big that they overwhelmed him. He always kept hold of himself, no matter how hard they pushed, in some part because he knew that it irritated Emony to be denied anything, but also because he was Torias and that was all he could be. As useful as they were, all three of them, their female insights only went so far in a male body, and he could no more do what they had done than Nilani beneath him could do what her male hosts had. They could only learn from experiences neither of them could relive, could only use the tools available to them…

…well, just the one tool in his case, he supposed, but it was powerful enough to count for a dozen.

So he took up the best of both worlds, used his female memories to find the places that worked for her, and his own male experiences to guide his own; it was a symbiosis in the truest possible sense, and he couldn’t help thinking with an ill-timed laugh that it was ironic how they never talked about this sort of thing in the initiate program. When Nilani shivered beneath him, hips hitching as he ghosted his fingertips across the lines of spots at their sides, he remembered how it had felt when Audrid’s husband did the same. When Nilani’s breath caught in her throat, her voice so much deeper, so much rougher than usual, the half-whimpered plea raw and throaty and beautiful, he was struck by Emony’s feelings, a precious moment relived when she had reacted just like this. He remembered their experiences, and let them guide him in taking her, supporting but never truly driving. Of course he’d never let them drive; nobody but Torias could ever drive Torias.

He was a pilot, after all. Even here, even now, even gasping and whimpering right alongside her, he was still a pilot, and if there was one thing a pilot knew how to do, it was drive.

And so he drove. He drove her crazy, he drove her to the edge, he drove himself to the precipice too. He drove them both to their breaking point, and then — like all good daredevil pilots do — he slammed on the brakes. The bed was his cockpit, and the woman beneath him his vessel, and not even the best teachers on Trill could ever make a great pilot out of a rank amateur. Audrid and Emony and Lela could teach him a lot, he couldn’t deny that now, but no-one could teach a man how to keep that bolt-bucket in the air if he wasn’t born for it. That was his talent, Torias’s alone. Driving was in his blood. Symbiont or no symbiont, this was what he was made for, the greatest gift he had, and the hands and mouth and body that explored this new terrain mapped out before him was all his own too. Torias Dax, in the cockpit once again.

It was a surprise, though, how much it heightened his own pleasure to heed the memories of Audrid and Emony and Lela, even Tobin on the rare occasions he’d let himself indulge it. It changed the way he felt, transformed the carnal into something holy, made it something precious. It felt so intimate, so unfathomably intimate to take Nilani in the ways they liked to be taken, to touch her in the places they liked to be touched, to hear their gasps and pleas in the discordant echo of hers. It felt so different now, so much more than anything he’d ever done before, and not just because he loved her but because for the first time he truly felt _joined_ to the lives and souls inside of him. This moment was theirs as much as his, a precious gift from Dax to Torias, and for the very first time he understood what it was to be joined.

He was still the one in control, still the pilot in the cockpit, but he’d never before felt quite so in tune with his ship, so much like the two of them were truly one. It was incredible, indescribable; it felt like every time he’d had before was nothing more than clumsy adolescent fumbling, like his whole life’s experience was for nothing. He’d be the first to admit, and with a grin, that there was a whole lot of experience to go through, but right now it felt like it all just added up to a rehearsal, like everything he’d ever known, everything he’d ever done had all come down to this This was the final exam, he realised; the hell with those tests in the initiate program, this was the make-or-break moment that really mattered. This was the pivotal moment, point of no return, the seal of his fate; this was split-second decision that would decide whether he would set the horizon on fire or crash and burn himself.

Torias had done this a lot. He could write volumes on how much he knew about sex (and about piloting, too, but one field of expertise at a time). He’d been here enough times that he’d always thought of himself as a fairly decent judge of what was good and what was bad, when something worked and when it didn’t. He let the engine tell him when to ease up on the throttle and he let his partner dictate the same with her moans and her movements, subtle shifts in her body and breathing, little cues that told him what to do, what felt good and what felt better than good, when to go deep and when to pull back. He knew this stuff, all right, knew it like the back of his hand. Hell, he knew it so well he could probably teach classes about it, if only those stuck-up stuff-shirts at the Commission would let it past the censors.

This, though? This was nothing he could have imagined.

It was one thing to see those reactions in Nilani’s face, to watch the line of her throat as she gasped, to feel the shudders in her body as she responded to his hands, to hear the way she cried out when he pressed his tongue to the sensitive juncture between hip and thigh, to hear and feel and sense the shift in her as he slid in deep. It was one thing to see and hear and watch those things, and another thing entirely to truly _know_ them. It was one thing to be the dissociated male, the tough guy doing his best to make sure his girl had a good time, but it was something completely different to remember how all that felt from her side, to look at her and realise that he knew precisely what she was feeling because he’d felt it himself a few dozen times too.

He took her like he’d been taken, moved her like he’d been moved, held her like he’d been held. He loved her with his body, but with his heart as well, just like Audrid told him, just like Lela did, even like Emony did, and it made all the difference. Torias hated to admit that someone else was right, especially someone who had made his life as complicated and emotional as those pretentious past hosts, but they were right about this. They were so completely right, and he didn’t need to ask Nilani to open her eyes to know that he would see the same newly-discovered depth reflected there, didn’t need to look at her at all to see the same shadows of memories old and new, past lives resonating in perfect pitch with their future, a new kind of joining, the blessing of lives past and future, an endless journey spread out ahead of them.

Before the month was out, they would be married. They would stand up in front of families and friends and whisper vows and sweet words, joining themselves together in something so much more symbolic than symbiosis. They would come together, and speak their promises aloud for all to hear. But the one promise that mattered, the one that was important… that promise started here and now, in the tangled sheets of a bed they would share for barely a week before moving on. It started here, whispered between shuddering breaths and moments of climax. It was a promise of the purest kind filled with love, filled with potential, the promise of a future that neither of them could see but both of them wanted, a horizon just out of reach but sparkling so clearly. It was a diamond in the dust of a desert, a speck of perfection glimpsed from the impossible distance a shuttlecraft cockpit and Torias was a pilot seeing what nobody else ever would and cherishing it for a thousand lifetimes. That was his promise, and it was hers, a promise of love, a promise of the life to come, of things unseen, a promise of forever…

It was a promise that, for the first time in his life, Torias intended to keep.


End file.
